Newt Gingrich Thinks NBC Should Apologize to His Wife

Last week, after 16 aides and advisers quit Newt Gingrich's campaign en masse, the presidential hopeful’s Tiffany-loving wife Callista came under scrutiny as a possible cause of the staff revolt. NBC reported on the rumors in segments on "The Today Show" and then MSNBC Wednesday, quoting anonymous former staff members who criticized Callista Gingrich's role in the campaign.

Appearing on Fox News' “On The Record with Greta van Susteren,” Wednesday night Gingrich condemned the NBC reports and the “cowardly people who, frankly, lied about my wife,” and demanded that NBC apologize.

“I think the program this morning was totally irresponsible… and the kind of thing that makes it hard to make decent people run for public office,” Gingrich said, later adding, “NBC is supposed to be a responsible news organization, and I think that for them to attack somebody’s wife is utterly reprehensible.”

As for the “backstabbing” former staffers who spoke anonymously with NBC, Gingrich claimed that their departure was good riddance to bad rubbish. “We had several people who quit who had failed totally in their professional duties who, for the last month, had not been doing their jobs,” he told van Susteren.

Gingrich said that his and Callista’s partnership, which he compared to Nancy and Ronald Reagan’s, had “unnerved some of the consultants… and they resented the idea that they had to have the two of us talk to them about things like our schedules.” And that wasn’t the only place where they differed—Gingrich said that he wanted to integrate social media like Facebook and YouTube into his strategy, but some of the consultants “wanted to run a 1952 campaign.”

Last week, after 16 aides and advisers quit Newt Gingrich's campaign en masse, the presidential hopeful’s Tiffany-loving wife Callista came under scrutiny as a possible cause of the staff revolt. NBC reported on the rumors in segments on "The Today Show" and then MSNBC Wednesday, quoting anonymous former staff members who criticized Callista Gingrich's role in the campaign.

Appearing on Fox News' “On The Record with Greta van Susteren,” Wednesday night Gingrich condemned the NBC reports and the “cowardly people who, frankly, lied about my wife,” and demanded that NBC apologize.

“I think the program this morning was totally irresponsible… and the kind of thing that makes it hard to make decent people run for public office,” Gingrich said, later adding, “NBC is supposed to be a responsible news organization, and I think that for them to attack somebody’s wife is utterly reprehensible.”

As for the “backstabbing” former staffers who spoke anonymously with NBC, Gingrich claimed that their departure was good riddance to bad rubbish. “We had several people who quit who had failed totally in their professional duties who, for the last month, had not been doing their jobs,” he told van Susteren.

Gingrich said that his and Callista’s partnership, which he compared to Nancy and Ronald Reagan’s, had “unnerved some of the consultants… and they resented the idea that they had to have the two of us talk to them about things like our schedules.” And that wasn’t the only place where they differed—Gingrich said that he wanted to integrate social media like Facebook and YouTube into his strategy, but some of the consultants “wanted to run a 1952 campaign.”